Unedited transcript of the Bathyscaph Conference, January 20, 1958

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Unedited Transcript
of
THE BATHYSCAPH CONFERENCE
January 20, 1958
(Morning Session)
National A cademy of Sciences
Washington, D. C .
•
Committee on Oceanography
Committee on Undersea Warfare
Office of Naval Research
BATHYSCAPH CONFERENCE
National Academy of Sciences
January 20, 1958
(Morning Session)
Chairman - Dr. H. Brown (CIT)
ONR:
Dr. C. C. Bates
CDR. C. Bishop
Mr. W. H. Boehly
Dr. R. S. Dietz (London)
Dr. S. R. Galler
Mr. Go G. Lill
Mr. A. E. Maxwell
LCDR. A. K. McAdams
CAPT. J. C. Myers
Mr. A. W. Pryce
CAPT. E. T. Shepard
Mr. T. Soohoo
PRESENT
NAS-NRC:
Mr. W. Bascom
Mr. J. S. Coleman
Mr. W. R. Thurston
Mr. R. Vetter
Mr. G. W. Wood
CNO:
TIAPT.
R. H. Bass
CArT. C. C. Cole
RADM. L. R. Daspit
CDR. N. A. Garretty
CDR. A. H. Jerbert
Dr. E. Baumgarten (NWAG)
Columbia Ue, Hudson Labs.:
Mr. R. Frassetto
Dr. R. A. Frosch
Mr. M. Lomask
USNUSL:
Dr. W. L. Clearwaters
Dr. J. W. Horton
Dr. R. V. Lewi s
NEL:
l5r7 F. N. D. Kurie
Dr. A. Bo Rechnitzer
WHOI:
Dr. C. OlD. Iselin
Mr. W. V. Kielhorn
Mr. W. Eo Schevill
Mary Sears
Dr. A. CoVine
BuSHIPS:
Mr. B. K. Couper
Mr. J. R. R. Harter
LCDR. J. F. Kalina
DTMB:
Mr. E. E. Johnson
LT.
c.
NOL:
Dr. P. M. Fye
Dr. S. J. Raff
OTHERS~
Dr. W. E. Benson, 'NSF
Mr. V. A. DelGrosso, NRL
CAPT. Ao R. Gallaher, USN Academy
Mr. J. V. Harrington, EB,
Gen. Dynamics Corp.
MR. G. A. Hamilton, USN SOFAR
Station, Bermuda
CAPT R. B. Lynch, SubDevGru 2
Dr. F. N. Spiess, MPL
Mr. S. T. Pike, Cmt. member
Dr. A. Spilhaus, U. of Minn.
Dr. E. Wenk, Jr., Southwest
Research Institute
j
&
SIO:
Dr. C. Eckart
Dro R. Revelle
O. Swanson
BATHYSCAPH CONFERENCE
1
National Academy of Sciences
January 20, 1958
-
'.
DR. BROWN:
Gentlemen, we are here today to discuss
a new device which makes it possible for man, for the
first time, to literally go to the greatest depths in
the oceans, and we are here today to discuss the potentialities of that device, both from the scientific point of
view and from the military point of view.
I am reminded a little bit, when thinking of the
potentialities of this new tool in the field of science,
of the situation which has arisen in the field of physics
and the physical sciences in general with the advent of
really high-speed automatic computers.
Now, high speed
automatic computers can obviously be used to solve rather
obvious problems, but there are many problems which are
J
not obvious, for which the computers can be used also,
and indeed there are problems which would not be amenable
at all to solution if the computers did not exist.
A
physiCist triend of mine stated that this made it necessary for the phYSicist really to reorient his thinking,
that so often his past conditioning concerning the types
of problems that could be solved and the types of problems
that cannot be solved is such that he just automatically
diSmisses from his mind the supposedly impossible problems,
and indeed he dismisses them in his subconscious even without letting them come up to the surface.
This in phYSics
2
has been a very real problem.
By no means has full use
yet been made in the use of the computers in the solution
of difficult problems in theoretical physics.
•
In this particular case I believe that the analogy
is a good one.
gadget like
On the military
this~
from the past.
side~
I believe that we should take a lesson
This lesson I think was well illustrated
by a cartoon I saw not very long
caveman talking with another
him a huge assortment of
some thin, some
with a new kind of
fat~
ago~
caveman~
clubs~
which showed a
and he had around
all shapes and
some with knots on
them~
sizes~
some were
smooth, and over in the distance there was another caveman shooting a very primitive bow and arrow.
•
with the clubs looked over at his friend and
The caveman
said~
"That's
a nice trick" but it doesn't have any military significance."
In 1956 a conference was held" sponsored by the
Committee on Undersea Warfare in the Office of Naval
Research~
a conference on Aspects of Deep Sea Research.
That report has just come out" and it was pointed out to
me a few. moments ago that a resolution was passed unanimously at the conference.
I would like to read it to you.
"The careful design and repeated testing of the
bathyscaph has clearly demonstrated the technical feasibility of operating manned vehicles safely at great
depths in the ocean.
The scientific implications of this
3
capability are far reaching.
We, as individuals
interested in the scientific exploration of the deep
sea, wish to go on record as favoring the immediate
initiation of a national program aimed at attaining for
the United states undersea vehicles capable of transporting men and their instruments to the great depths of the
oceans."
Since that resolution was passed something has been
done by the ONR, and this morning we are going to have a
series of reports concerning what has been done.
Today, in the first part of our conference, we have
a couple of general objectives.
This morning we are to
consider whether the use of manned vehicles for deep sea
"
research is being properly explOited, and this will in-
,.
clude (a) the presentation of scientific results of the
recent program of bathyscaph dives and evaluation of
their significance, and (b) consideration of thepotentialities and limitations of the bathyscaph for further
scientific stUdies of the deep ocean.
We hope to keep the symposium today as informal as
possible.
We want to have as much discussion as we can
possibly have.
For that reason I ask the speakers to
toe the line from the pOint of view of time.
Following
each individual paper there will be an opportunity for
discussion, but I hope that you will confine the discussion
4
at that point to the specific topics under discussion
in that particular paper.
Following the presentation
of the papers there will be what we hope will be about
•
an hour or hour and fifteen minutes for general discussion,
so, if you can, reserve your general remarks for that particular
pe~iod.
We were going to use a time clock, but I
am a firm believer that that sort of stifles things, so
we will dispense with the time clock, and I request the
speakers to be careful.
We will first have some introductory remarks by
Dr. Iselin, of Woods Hole.
DR. ISELIN:
I suppose the reason I was asked to get,,·
up and say something is that I probably wear more hats
than anybody else in this room.
The Undersea Warfare Committee of the Academy has
been interested in this thing and has been thinking about
it for quite a few years.
We have not thought that the
advantages of being able to go to any depth was the overpowering thing.
We have thought perhaps it would be nice
to get down as deep as the axis of the main sound channel.
Then, of course, the Mine Advisory Committee of the
Academy has been thinking about getting down and looking
at the bottom in very much shallower water.
The other thing I think I might say is that, as an
administrator in oceanography, I have probably been the
•
5
worst enemy of this thing that it has ever had, and I am
just going to publicly admit that probably I think that
I was wrong.
Before the war we built little ones, and
the thing I had against them was the gasoline.
This was
a messy thing from our little vessels, to have to launch
something involving several hundred gallons of gasolineo
You put these diesel engines in the ships, or you don1t
have any gasoline, then it just upsets the whole business
if you have any messing around on the deck with gasolineo
Another thing I had against it was, I think, peculiar
to our environment at Woods Hole.
It's a long way from
Woods Hole harbor out to the 100 fathom curve, and the
water is too dirty to make use of a manned vehicle near
Woods Hole.
The currents are too strong.
Wintertime is
too stormy, and all such things, but it does seem now,
looking back on it, very foolish.
If we had just put a
few dollars a year into building such a thing, we could
long ago have acoumulated a great deal of experience, but
it always seemed each time that the thing came up that
there wasn't quite enough science to be gained that we
couldnrt gain some other way.
I feel now that I did make
a serious mistake, and that the whole subject of oceanography has grown up enough to the point where not only
can you afford to take advantage of the basic idea in
this device, but there are certainly clearly, I think,
6
things that you can't find out any other wayo
DR. BROWN:
Now we will hear from Gordon Lill, of
the Office of Naval Research.
I
MR. LILL:
I wish to welcome the group on behalf of
the Office of Naval Research, and to make a few remarks
about the interest -of the Office of Naval Research in the
bathyscaph and bathyscaph-like devices.
About five years ago we could have had the French
bathyscaph, the FNRS-3, for $15,000.
At that time old
Auguste Piccard, the bathyscaph's inventor, was in hock
to the French Navy for exactly that amount.
He sent us
a plea through the Office of Air Research in Brussels,
Belgium, to, for God's sake, give the French Navy
$15,000 and we could have the bathyscaph.
we didn't believe in it.
At that time
We didn't have the vision to
see what possibilities it had, and it just got lost in
the shuffle.
About two years after that we had a conference on
the bathyscaph, which was initiated at the request of
Dr. Tom Killian, who is the Chief Scientist in the Office
of Naval Research.
He had been taken to Naples by
Dr. Robert Dietz to look at the bathyscaph, which is the
bathyscaph TRIESTE, which had been made in Italy since
they had lost their FNRS-3 to the French.
Dr. Killian
became quite enthusiastic about it .. As a consequence
7
Dr. Adkins and myself went to Naples and spent a week
with Piccard, and invited him over here for the symposium
on Aspects of Deep Sea Research, at which time this resolution was passed suggesting that a program in bathyscaphs
be organized as a national program.
Last summer, or early
in the year last year, in 1957, we made a contract with
Jaques Piccard to operate the bathyscaph for the Office
of Naval Research for the benefit of those scientists who
wished to go down in the bathyscaph, and to operate it
in the Mediterranean.
The contract was a simple one,
simply for the operation of the bathyscaph.
hear, we had a very successful summer.
whereas we had expected to get only 15.
As you will
We got 26 dives
There were cer-
tain communication difficulties with the Italians, but
I think the Italians really did very well by us •. They
gave us tugs.
We had a tug at our disposal whenever we
wanted it, at no charge, and we had various other things
supplied through the Italian Navy.
For this Admiral
Arleigh Burke sent a letter of thanks to the Chief of
Naval Operations of the Italian Navy.
I might make a few remarks about the bathyscaph.
I think most of you know what it is and how it operates.
If somebody will flip on the projector, I will run through
this very quickly.
(Slide.)
The bathyscaph is a free diving device.
8
It has no connections of any sort to the surface of the
ocean.
There are no cables.
are fastened to a crane.
These cables you see here
It is being hoisted up onto
the pier.
It works on a very simple principle which has been
known for hundreds of years.
Archimedes.
It is the principle of
This big tank (indicating) is filled full
of gasoline, which is simply used for buoyancy control.
The walls of this tank are about one-fifth of an inch
thick.
These black lines mark compartments in the gaso-
line tank.
This one is crooked, as you see, to allow
for the expansion of the gasoline, since this tank is
open to sea water pressures and temperatures.
Sea water
can come in through holes on each end of this tank.
Therefore, this tank does not have to be built to withstand strong pressures.
These devices you see here are additional buoyancy
controls.
There are tanks inside full of iron shot,
which are held in place electromagnetically.
circuit is broken, the iron shot is released.
If the
If any-
thing happens to the power supply, or if the whole power
supply on the bathyscaph goes out of commission, this
whole tank with the ballast is jettisoned and the bathyscaph comes up to the surface at once.
This tank is roughly 50 feet long and 12 feet in
9
diameter.
The sphere is about 6 feet in inside diameter
and about 4 inches thick.
4 inches thick.
•
I think the steel hull is about
It's made in the form ot two hemispheres
which are pressed together.
It will protect people inside
to depths of 10,000 meters with a satety tactor ot 1.5,
or
a safety faotor
meters.
ot over 2 or 2.5 at depths of 6000
It has a window in it for viewing, which is
about 16 inches across at the outside and about 4 inches
across at the inside.
The window is set in the bathyscaph
hull like this (deaoftstrating) and is made out ot p1exiglass.
The window i8 stronger than the hull, and it was
designed this way on purpose since it gives the appearance
ot being a weak point in the sphere.
This is the entrance hatch (indicating).
down through a tunnel.
It goes
You enter the sphere through
here, and you have a pressure door which you can close
and bolt behind you.
There is a window here (indicating),
but you can't see out ot it once you are inside with the
door closed.
it submerges.
This tunnel is filled with sea water once
When it comes to the surtace they blow the
water out with compressed air.
The bathyscaph operates fairly well in a Sea State 2.
It can be towed fairly well in Sea State 2.
you'd better stay in port.
In Sea State 3
This is rather fragile.
We have high hopes of eventually moditying this craft
10
so it has greater horizontal mobility, so that the power
supply which runs instruments and lights inside this
sphere is separated from the power supply which runs this
little propeller up here (indicating).
At the present
time there is only one power supply, delivered by silverzinc batteries.
on board.
He has also used lead storage batteries
He has had one-ton storage batteries on board
and taken it down to a depth of 3000 meters with these.
It has a present mobility of about one-quarter of a mile
if you want to conserve your power supply for scientific
purposes.
If you want to use it for moving around, you
can probably go about 10 miles with it.
You get a good view through this port.
angle view.
It's a wide-
You are limited in vision by the sea water
and by the amount of lighting you can fasten on the outside.
Is there anything else I can say about this, Art?
MR. MAXWELL:
MR. LILL:
this bathyscaph.
I think that covers it pretty well.
I think I covered the main features of
The French one is about like this.
The
sphere on the French one is not as good as this one, since
...
I ~_
it's made out of cast material and this one is made out
of forged material.
It will probably never wear out.
It's made out of forged fatigueless steel.
If you were
11
to dive this to 10,000 meters the sphere would contract
to about 3 millimeters.
implode.
If it ever did break it would
It wouldn't break.
DR!,. BROWB:
Are there any questions about this?
<NO response.)
DR. BROn:
If not, thank you very much.
We will
. • •f'
go on to our first technical paper.
Dr. Russell Lewis will describe some acoustic research
that has been done with the bathyscaph.
" DR. LEWIS:
'rhe Underwater Sound Laboratory' 8 part
of the program was in three parts.
As many of you know,
when the invitation was extended for operating aboard the
bathyscaph, in the various laboratories there was very
little time to prepare, and before very- much could b"e
~.
done several people went to see the bathyscaph in Italy
to see what could be fitted to it, in it, and on it.
After returning from this trip there was about two months
time left to get ready
0
Therefore, the equipment had to
be as simple as it possibly could be.
The phases which the Underwater Sound Laboratory
undertook were to make some directional measurements of
the background noise present, to provide the bathyscaph
with underwater telephone communication, and to attempt
to do some correlation work in the deep sound channel.
The emphasis was placed on the background noise
12
,
~'
measurements.
It was not hoped that we "could get an
area complete,ly tree of man-made noise, and we did not.
We merely measured the noise that was present at the time
'.
of the dives.
If I may have the first slide, Dick, I will illustrate where the hydrophones were placed.
(Slide)
Can we get the left end on the screen for
a minute?
The line hydrophone on the stern, of course, had a
receiving pattern in the horizontal plane.
The rectangle
above the horizontal line hydrophone, of course, also had
a directional pattern normal to its axis.
The little
square to the left of the hydrophone represents an omnidirectional hydrophone, and ahead of the center structure
is a square hydrophone which used pressure gradient
t~ch­
niques to get directionality, and the pattern was roughly
a cardioid with the main axis aimed upward.
That's all for that slide, Dick.
The apparatus used to measure the sound intensity
was a simple transistor amplifier, a one-octave band
filter used for one-octave bands, and a Ballantine meter
and suitable switching.
It had been hoped that a reading could be taken
about every 15 seconds during the dive.
ing was taken about every half-minute.
Actually a readA certain amount
13
of t1me was made by dropp1ng a ballast J which makes
noise and prevents the tak1ng of data and underwater
telephone commun1cation.
The data that I w1ll present
here was taken on the deepest d1ve of my own dur1ng the
summer" to 9,,200 feet, and some very interest1ng effects
were shown here.
(Dr~ Lewis exhibited charts to illustrate his
presentation. )
(Chart 1)
These are depths in thousands of feet.
The levels are approximately db above a microbar" and the
lowest frequency, the 300 to 600 cycles, is blue.
The
next octave is red, the next one is yellow, and the next
one 1s white.
On this particular dive there are several
prominent things.
"
One response at this depth is just a
general noise increaseo
Unfortunately we didn't get data
here and here (indicating) at this depth, but this happens
to be the axis of the deep sound channel in the Tyrrhenian
Sea, Which is about at 1000 feet" much shallower than the
Atlantic.
This
particul.~
hump was a small tanker which
was disappearing toward the island of Ponza at the timeo
It didn't disappear as fast as might be indicated here.
It just happened that it came in at this level.
However,
it was gone at the time we reached this depth (indicating).
This is the most interesting, at 4,700 feet, roughly,
well below the deep sound channel.
There was a very
14
substantial increase in sound on the vertical hydrophone,
which received, of course, in the horizontal plane.
,
.,
was a quite pronounced increase.
It
This was noted to some
extent on the omni-directional hydrophone, but not at
all on the horizontal hydrophone, and it _a. pot recognized
by the one which received sounds from above but not from
below, which says essentially that the virtual source of
the sound was at the level of the bathyscaph.
This can
be illustrated a little better on another type of presen-
fttJ.- depth was
ta tion which I will show you in a moment.
about 4700 or 4800 feet.
(Chart 2)
I will come back to that later.
NOW, by putting this in thr.e dimensions
the relationships are a little clearer.
sound channel (indicating).
T.his was the
This was the saall tanker,
and the effect of reduced directivity index at low frequencies is apparent from this presentation.
Also, there
appears to be a pattern in here which wasn't too noticeable
on the other type presentation.
I'm sorry.
here.
I should have explained my coordinates
Depth is this way (indicating).
(indicating).
This is level
Frequency is getting higher from dark to
light, from low to high frequencies.
This, again, is the
vertical hydrophone on the stern.
This was the horizontal
hydrophone (indicating), which had
res~se
to various
sounds, especially to this small tanker, but did not
15
recognize, or scarcely recognized, t~.big increase in
sound at 4700 feet, but did show another response here
(indicating) which was not indicated by the vertical
,
hydrophone.
(Chart 3)
This is the omni-directional hydrophone,
and again the 4700 foot level is here (indicating).
It
is interesting that it apparently showed up on the high
frequency end but not on the low frequency end.
However,
I might say that a very possible cause for this is that
there aren't enough pOints.
You can't take too
.~ch
data
taking a reading every half-minute.
The pressure gradient
hydropho~e,
the one which
received from above but not below, could be used only
at two frequencies because of its band-limiting characteristiCS, and that is illustrated by this presentation.
(Chart 4)
When we were ascending on this same dive
it is rather interesting that at about the same depth,
4700 feet or thereabouts, the vertical hydrophone again
showed a sudden increase in sound level, but this time
it stayed there.
The sound level was present during the
rest of the ascent up to 2000 feet.
there, I don't know.
What happened beyond
I don't have data.
But on the omni-
directional hydrophone the same effect is noted but not
until the depth is very much less, and on the horizontal
hydrophone the same can be said.
16
Now ~·th1 s sound we know (indicating chart).
It was
from a tanker which appeared some two hours after we
surfaced.
It could be recognized as a
ship~
and we
assumed that the tanker which appeared was the ship that
was generating the sound because the sound became continually louder.
(Chart 5)
dives.
We took similar measurements on other
There were four dives ava11able and only two of
them could be used for this particular type of measurement.
The other one was made south of Capri.
was less.
We went to 3600 feet, and at about 1500 feet
on that dive there was a similar rise in sound
Also~
The depth
l~vel.
on the dive at Capri -- I'm sorry I don't have a
chart here to show it, but I didn't have time to prepare
it -- there was a continual decrease in sound from the
surface to the bottom.
This is understandable.
There
it was Sea State 3 and the noise continually decreased
as we got away from the
surface~
and superimposed on
that were the various fluctuations.
Dick~
will you put the next slide on for a moment.
(Slide 2)
This shows for the deep dive the sound
channel axis as taken from the temperature measurements
made on the thermometer which was in the
bathyscaph~
and I'm sorry to say that wasn't too accurate, but it was
good enough to determine the sound channel depth.
This
17
also agrees with a 900 foot BT.
Next slide.
(Slide 3)
,
The point of interest here is on the left,
the series of arrows.
These indicate the rotation of the
bathyscaph as it descended on the deep dive.
As you can
see, it behaved in a rather erratic manner.
Sometimes it
would change direction by 200 degrees in 3 minutes.
Other
times it would reverse suddenly and go in the opposite
direction.
The total turning was either one-half or
on~-and-a-half
revolutions -- I don't know which because
the data is not continuous.
Is there one more slide?
That's all?
All right.
The other dives made for the Sound Lab were a dive
co~unications,
made on the 14th of July, south
of Capri, to 3600 feet.
It had been intended that that
to test
should have been a dive to measure the bathyscaph selfnoise.
However, the equipment had not arrived, and
Piccard was anxious to see how communications worked.
was very pleased, incidentally.
He
We had very satisfactory
communication with the surface all summer, using an
underwater telephone working at the same frequency and
on the same principles as that of the UQC used aboard
submarines.
However, this was a much smaller telephone,
with about 15 watts output.
A dive was made to 300 meters, or 1000 feet, roughly,
18
to make same measurements at the axis of the sound channelo
This dive required that the bathyscaph be suspended at a
particular depth, and it is inherently unstable in depth
because as the gasoline compresses you lose buoyancy and
as it expands you gain buoyancy, and these work in the
opposite direction from which you would like.
Therefor.,
something had to be done to gain some
buoyancy
at a particular depth.
positiv~
This was done by putting a
250 pound displ,acement float on the surt,ace.
We connected
this to the bathyscaph with 1000 feet ot one-quarter inch
maJt,1.la rope.
I
The 250 pOWld displacement was sufficient
so that the bathyscaph ballast could be adjusted and the
vessel could be kept at one particular depth.
We lost
depth control only once, and that was for a very brief
:
.11:
time.
The experiment was not a complete success from the
acoustical viewpoint, however.
We had mOWlted some motors
on the bathyscaph athwart-ship at one end, intending to
rotate the vessel so that we could use a correlater to
get directional noise information as we rotated at the
axis of the channel.
However, the correlater depended
completely on being able to rotate the bathyscaph.
battery box failed at the last moment.
The
It was hoped we
could rotate it using Piccard ' s own motors.
One of his
motors failed at the last moment, and it was impossible
19
to rotate the vessel on one motor.
Therefore, the best
that could be done was to log the sounds.
The direc-
tional pattern of the hydrophone is known, and I am still
trying to determine which of the many ships in the area
we can be certain we heard and which ones we could not
be certain of.
However, the bathyscaph did operate at
one depth and this can be repeated perhaps some time in
the future.
I might mention -- the limitations ot the bathyscaph
were mentioned earlier -- that we actually towed it in
a Sea State 5 one day, but we could not recommend it.
It suttered some damage.
in Sea state 3.
And we made at least two dives
Again, I wouldn't recommend that.
We
were soaked to the skin betore we got in the bathyscaph.
.,.
The four dives that we made, then, were used
~o
make
directional background noise measurements, as illustrated
by these drawings.
Two ot them were used for that purposeo
One was used for the telephone tests, and one was an
attempt to make measurements at sound channel depths.
That concludes my remarks on the subject.
DR. BROWN:
MR. HARTER:
Are there any questions?
I would like to know at what maximum
depth did your 15-watt phone work successfully, and did
~.
you have any reflection problems, and were they affected
by your angular po'sition?
We have an interest for carrier
20
modulated video.
DR. LEWIS:
The phone worked at all depths.
were reflections.
--
There
As a matter of fact, the telephone
could be used as a sort of auxiliary fathoaeter.
It was
used to measure ranges between the motor launch and the
bathyscaph.
I might mention it had another interesting use.
It permitted checking the proper functioning of the
ballast tanks.
Previous to using the telephone it was
necessary for Piecard to look out •• e,h window in
to see that the ballast was flowing smoothly.
t~
However,
since it could be heard on the telephone this wasn't
necessary and resulted in less disruption of the datataking procedure.
MR. FRESSETO:
Was there any explanation for this
sound increase at 3700 feet?
DR. LEWIS:
For some reason or other the sound was
channeled to this depth, which was far beyond the reach
of the depth sound channel.
I can't say why.
I don't
have precise temperature measurements, unfortunately,
and it wasn't shown on the thermometer that Piccard had.
However, the fact that the bathyscaph rotated suddenly
!:
at various depths probably indicates currents which may
have same effect on the channeling of sounds.
DR. BROWN:
Yes?
You
hav~
a question?
21
DR. VINE:
I think it is quite possible and practical
that that could be focusing from a distance -- this
source.
Without the data here I would only guess about
15 miles or something thereabouts.
DR. LEWIS:
.
The only ship we know of in the area of
that small tanker was this large ship
wh1~h
appeared some
time after we surfaced, and if that is where the sound was
coming from it would have had to travel same 60 miles to
have reached that depth.
Perhaps it could have been
multiple reflect1ons.
DR. VINE:
It would only require something like
1000 fathoms of water to perm1t focusing in that area.
MR. FRASSETO:
I thought the nature of the d1agram
was such that the focusing occurred at the surface and
not the depths.
DR. FROSCH:
He has a hydrophone on which you look
at the horizontal, so you have to look at it and paraphrase it at that depth and go up, and in that sense the
focusing is really provided by the hydrophone itself.
DR. LEWIS:
There was another interesting phenomena.
Perhaps we should expect this, but of course there was
an abrupt change in slope with frequency at that depth.
All the frequencies appeared to come in at about the
same level.
that.
I don't really have a good explanation for
At other depths they seemed to have a more or
22
less normal slope •
. DR. RAFF:
DR\e LEWIS:
...
You might comment on your .•••••
On this dive we didn't have it.
On
the
sound channel dive we did, but we did have a fair surface
resonance, I would say, at least for anything that could
be seen from the top, as fram the Corvette as it steamed
around -- well, it didn't steam around too much, but we
did have a fair range of vision.
DR. BROWN:
now.
I think we are going to have to move on
Thank you very much.
Our next paper will be given by Mr. Morton Lomask,
on low frequency acoustic research.
MR. LOMASK:
The work of Hudson Laboratories took
over in general from the low end of Russ Lewis's frequency
range and went down.
We confined our measurements to the
range of from 5 to 400 cycles.
Our purposes were to
measure levels, ambient noise levels, as a function of
depth and frequency, and also the self-noise of the bathyscaph, to find where hydrophones must be placed to be
quiet and where they woUld be noisy, and also to measure
the noise of the ordinary operations of the bathyscaph,
such as dropping ballast and releasing gasoline and turning on motors, and so forth.
In the course of our stay we found that we would be
able to use a low frequency source from an acoustic
23
minesweeper, and we thought that this would enable us
to get a vertical protile, a vertical energy distribution
of a point source at the surface at different distances.
....
We had tour dives.
First we had an 1100 meter dive off
Capri, and this was, so to speak, to get our teet wet.
We tried out the equipment there.
We attempted to get
levels, acoustic levels, versus depth and frequency,
,\
and, also, we tried turning on different things in the
bathyscaph and we analyzed the noise levels on hydrophones spaced at different parts of the bathyscaph.
The second dive was ott Panza, to 3200 meters, and
this was to measure levels and directionality ot ambient
noise on the way down, which required a slow descent, and
on the way up we had the source from the acoustic minesweeper operating at a distance of around 7 miles, and
we got a vertical profile of the energy distribution.
'!'he third dive was also off Ponza, to 3000 meters,
ana it was essentially the same as Dive No.2 except that
now our sound source on the ascent was 3 miles off.
Our last dive was to 1000 meters, off Capri, and that
was to measure sound levels as a function of depth, ambient
levels, and in this dive we made a determined effort to
hold the bathyscaph by its own means at different levels
and see how it operated as a vehiele where we, so to
speak, pre-set its depth at some intermediate depth not at
24
the bottom.
I have just a couple of words on the instrumentation
and general layout of our scheme.
We used 7 barium-
titanate crystal hydrophones and we located them in
several areas.
mounted rigidly.
We had one over here (indicating),
We had one on the middle of this
conning tower, so to speak, and one at this end here,
and the spacing was 16 teet and 32 feet, and of course
we considered these extreme ones.
We had an element in
array spaced at 50 feet, and we had an identical system
of 3 hydrophones spaced from wires dangling down here
(drawing on blackboard), which was more or less an
alternative array if things here didn't work, and it
also provided us with ideas on hydrophone mounting
if
it was more quiet this way, dangled from wires, or this
way, where it was more rigid.
Then we had another hydrophone to give us a vertical
array, which was, in most of our dives, suspended from a
float or, rather, being pulled up by a float tied down
to the bathyscaph and up 50 feet from it, so we would
have a vertical array similar to this horizontal array
with 16 foot spacing and 50 foot spacings.
We had no electronics external to the bathyscaph.
We thought it would be better to have all our electronics
inside.
In so dOing, the thought was that we could build
25
lower noise electronics if we did not have to compromise
with external pre-amplifiers and things like that.
Inside the bathyscaph we had two articles of electronics.
One was just simply a dual-channel low-noise
pre-amplifier.
Then we had our major chassis, which was
a bank of filters and integraters and a read-out system 9
and also a correlater which employed the same read-out
system as the other electronics.
All work was done in six different frequency channelso
These are nominal figures on the center frequencies of
the filter bands:
7~
cycles, 15 cycles, 30, 60, 120, 2400
The selectivity of these filters was approximately so
that the 3 db point on this curve would be about two-thirds
the center of frequency.
In other words, the Q was around
three-halves, and we endeavored to make all these filters
with this identical Q.
When we analyzed a sample of noise
we charged the integrating condensers for 60 seconds,
for one minute, and we charged them simultaneously.
In
other words, we had an integrating system for each
channel, so the whole spectrum analysis was taken on the
same sample of noise integrated over one minute.
I mean
j
we did n9t take a reading of 240 cycles at a level reading
and at a time later take a sample.
I think this is
significant because, as the results indicate, there are
sharp fluctuations in the course of a minute or so.
26
The correlater was a 8ine correlatar.
We:had the
outputs of two hydrophones go through these matched
filters and then the signals were clipped and
of the axis crossings were compared and
this was our correlation scheme.
phase
t~e
and
.easured~
So much for the instru-
mentation of it.
I want to say at the outset that the bases of what
follows~
dives.
the results I am going to
.ention~
We had gaps in these dives and,
information is not exhaustive or
are four
the
therefore~
enc7clop.d1c~
certain things do stand out and are worth
but
.entioning~
but it has to be qualified by mentioning the fact that
there are just four tests involved.
First, we will consider the spectrum of ambient
noise at various depths (drawing on blackboard) where
this axis is db below a dyne per cycle
bandwidth~
a
dyne per square centimeter per cycle bandWidth, and this
one here is frequency (indicating).
The typical
spectrum that appears is something like this at a deeper
depth.
The highest energy per cycle bandWidth is in the
low end and it decays with the slope of something like
6 db per octave, and this brings us down to around
25 cycles.
gradual.
At this point here --well, this is very
I shouldn't say "at this point," but we seem
to lose some of this slope.
It levels out, but it still
27
decreases, and this goes on up until a little over 100
Then there is a suggestion of an increased slope
cycles.
again.
..
Sometimes this appears to a greater extent and
sometimes it's not so obvious.
For reasonably quiet con-
ditions -- in other words, low sea state number or for
operation right at the bottom -- the reference line here
is something like minus 30 db below a dyne per square
centimeter.
NOW,
we also were able to get curves of ambient
levels versus depth, where this would be the surface
and here would be the bottom (drawing on blackboard),
and here we would have units of energy.
In other words,
this would be a simple filter band, maybe a
7, cycle
filter band, or maybe it's the 30 cycle, and so forth.
The curves that I have gotten had more fluctuations
than in Russ's curves that we Just saw before.
The
structure in my case was quite a bit more irregular.
I will say more about that in a moment.
We observed that for different frequency bands
I mean, to draw a straight line through here (drawing
on blackboard) you would get, in general, a different
slope of this line.
In general, of course, it was
noisiest near the surface and decreased monotonically
if you drew a line through the average of these fluctuations to the bottom, and a straight line actually was
28
not a very bad representation.
For low frequencies,
below 30 cycles, this line was more like this (indicating)
and the pattern was very defin1te.
frequencies, for
7~
For the lowest of
cycles, it was almost verticalo
There
was no particular preference for the low frequencies to
any depth.
For higher frequencies, like 60, or 120, or
240 cycles, we observed that those frequencies favored
the surface and decreased monotonically to the bottom.
We' were fortunate to have curves of this taken for
different sea states, and of course the greater the sea
state number the greater the rate of increase of noise
as you go to the surface.
Sea State 2, for example,
would have a slope, or a rate of increase, around twice
as great as Sea State 0 or
l~.
NOw, these fluctuations in my data were of the order
of 50 percent of the mean value.
In other words, if you
consider this point here, you would get fluctuations
around one-half the leve, 50 percent of the level, and
these fluctuations are rapid.
In other words, if you
make one spectrum analysis separated from another one
just two minutes away, you might be 25 percent off.
On our directionality measurements the results are
difficult to analyze, and we are dOing this now.
not going to say anything on it.
I am
We do have the data on
it, though, but it does not suggest anything obvious.
29
For our vertical profiles -- I will erase this (erasing drawings from blackboard) -- we had a sound source,
which was this noise maker from the minesweeper.
It was
a hammer-box with a fundamental of 60 cycles, but it also
was rich in harmonics which just happened to coincide
with our filter bands.
This was very fortunate.
We would
have this source, and off at a distance the bathyscaph
would -- actually we did all these measurements on the
ascent -- the bathyscaph would go up and, in so doing,
it would take a vertical profile of the received source
signal.
When the source was
this figure
7t
1i miles
away -- actually
is not completely accurate -- it might
have been 6 miles away, because the bathyscaph did not
go vertical.
It went off to the side quite a bit.
let's call it
7i
miles.
When it was
7i
But
miles off, we
observed a very obvious concentration of the sound energy
in the sound channel, which, on the data that I took, was
indicated at around 400 meters, and it was an asymmetric
sound channel and fell off very sharply on the top side.
Maybe I can quickly sketch in something of what it
looked like (drawing on blackboard).
This was around
300 meters, and this around 400 meters (indicating).
There seemed to be little energy above 300 meters, and a
very, very clear sound channel here (indicating).
Also,
since we did have the advantage of the source not being
30
multi-chromatic, but having 60, 120, and 240 cycles, we
were able to opserve if the concentration, letts say, in
the sound channel was frequency affected, and we got
•
indications that they were.
For instance, 120 cycles
seemed to be more definitely concentrated in the sound
channel than 60 cycles; 120 cycles here was predominant
over 120 cycles.
On another dive we had the source spaced at 3 miles
away, and we did the same measurements.
Here we noticed
no concentration at all in the sound channel as we showed
here.
In other words, the concentration in the sound
channel apparently took place somewhere between 3 miles
and
7!
miles.
Again we noticed that the energy near the
surface was low, and again we noticed a frequency dependence of this energy distribution.
rather complicated.
This distribution was
60 cycles in the 3 mile case seemed
to stand out at lower depths, and the higher frequencies
stood out when you were in shallower water.
In our
distribution of ambient noise in general we did not
notice a concentration of ambient noise in the sound
channel.
In Russ Lewis's work we did notice a suggestion
of it, I believe'.
In this low frequency analysiS I did not see any
definite suggestion of a sound channel as indicated from
31
ambient noise levels.
If anything, I noticed a tendency
in all four of these dives to have some kind of a channel
around 900 meters.
•
I was just hoping that the channel
you discovered was around there, but it wasn't.
In my
data. there is a definite indication of a noisy layer
around 900 meters.
As far as what this eould be due to,
it doesn't seem to be merely a function of time.
At
that moment we passed 900 meters a lot of noise came by
and just sort of disappeared.
In general, whenever we
held the bathyscaph at a fixed depth we got pretty
regular readings time-wise, so the suggestion here is
that either there is aetually a noisy layer there in low
frequency noise or else it so happens that the bathyscaph
just makes noise when it goes to that depth.
I don't
know.
On general things about the bathyscaph, first of
all it doesn't seem to go up and down perfectly straight.
It might go down at an angle and come up at an angle and
end up a mile away from where you thought it was.
This
might be attributed to the fact that in general Jacques
Piccard, I think, let out ballast from one ballast tank
and not from another.
I don't know what his reasons
were, but this might account for some of it anyway.
usual operations of the bathyscaph, such as dropping
ballast or releasing gas, are noisy and, in general,
The
32
prohibit making any kind of ambient noise measurements,
certainly.
I mentioned that in our last dive we made a definite
effort to hold the bathyscaph constant at some intermediate
depths.
I believe the numbers were 250 meters and 350
meters, and we were successful in doing this without any
external means.
It was not easy to do.
Piccard had to
continually release ballast and gasoline to adjust the
level, but once it was adjusted it stayed pretty nicely
put to within 10 meters for a period of 20 minutes without doing anything, enabling us to make some good measurements.
That is all I have to say at the moment.
DR. BROWN:
Are there any questions?
DR. LEWIS:
I might mention I do have a case of the
noise rise at 900 meters.
MR. LOMASK:
dives.
It's one of the smaller ones.
I have observed this on all four of my
In one of my dives this was an indication of a
sound channel where it was computed temperature-wise, but
on other dives it could not show.
The only thing that
seemed consistent was a sound channel or noise channel
at 900 meters.
MR. MAXWELL:
I'd like to ask you a question on your
dive on which you had the sound source, the noise maker.
You said that the sound that you picked up in the second
33
channel was frequency dependent.
Am I correct in think-
ing that this might be an indication of dispersion in
velocity of sound in sea water, or is this just due to
•
the attenuation at those frequencies?
MR. LOMASK:
I doubt if it's attenuation, because
attenuation would not play any part 1n these ranges.
most we were
7i
miles away.
1m. MAXWELL:
I will ask Bob Frosch it this 1s an
indication of dispersion.
.
·<DR:
At
FROSCH:
Is it not?
Not the bulk velocity of lIoWld belng
dependent on the frequency.
DR. VINE:
Is this frequency getting low enough so
that it might have, maybe, a difference in the degree of
diffraction?
MR. LOMASK:
There was 120 cycles just seemed to love
the sound channel.
DR. VINE:
60 cycles was more spread out.
Would you like to clarify a little bit
your statement on the difference in the ambient noise
between the surface and the bottom in the different sea
states?
MHo LOMASK:
If you take the output of a filter band,
the rectified, integrated output -- these were all based on
one minute integrations -- and plotted your points like
so (indicating), you got a real jagged looking curve to
the surface, where you could draw a straight line through
34
with a little imag1nation" and it we consider one frequency -- let's say 60 cycles -- and if we consider Sea
state 0" we would get such a straight 11ne.
If we con-
sider Sea State 2" we would get such a straight line
with" of course" fluctuations around that like this
(drawing on blackboard).
MR. SHEVILL:
Would you imply that the bottom would
remain the same?
MR. LOMASK:
The bottoms were pretty close.
DR .• FROSCH:
Is this on the db plo;?
MR. LOMASK:
No" this is linear.
LCDR. KALINA:
Was a sound velocity meter used, or
did you compute .the velocity profile?
MR. LOMASK:
LCDR. KALINA:
I didn't compute velocities at all.
In determining where the sound
channel is?
MR. LOMASK:
LCDR. KALINA:
We did take BTs.
But you didn't measure the sound
velocity profile?
MR. LOMASK:
No.
We didn't measure any velocities.
The sound channel that I have observed from this case -in other wordS, where the 120 cycles and 60 cycles seemed
to be concentrated when the source was
7~
miles away --
we got a very sharp curve over here, which centered at
400 meters, so that is what I called the acoustic sound
35
channel.
I didn't make any velocity measurement •• ,
CDR. BISHOP:
y
•
When you covered the bathyscaph you
took ambient noise measurements in the same manner,
didn't you?
MR. LOMASK:
Whenever we did this.
In other words,
this was like our measurements on the botto•.
not get these 50 percent fluctuations.
'''0. 4;Lei '
We got maybe
20 percent, maybe 10, so this leads me to believe that
the fluctuations are not time-dependent.
Either tbey
are depth-dependent or it t s some self-noise
ot~.,~b,.~by­
scaph.
CDR. BISHOP:
On these plots that you were
~king
here, where you show a difference in level from the
surface to the bottom, did you find any difference in
that slope as a function of the ascent or descent, or
were they pretty much in agreement?
MR. LOMASK:
We only took these on descents.
Our
differences in general -- I don't know if we made the
wisest use of our ascent and descent, but we took a very
slow descent, concentrating on ambient noise levels,
and since this used up so much time we figured that we
would only have left a pretty fast ascent, which was
sufficient for measuring this sort of propagation deal
over here with the source, so we went down to measure
ambient noise and came up to get the profile in the same
36
dive.
CDR. BISHOP:
The reason I ask is that on these plots
of Lewis's there is a very definite increase in level on
it.
MR. LOMASK:
I would like also to mention one point
I believe I forgot, and that is hydrophone placement.
We found that the hydrophone here, I guess (indicating),
both on the ascent and descent, was caught up in the
turbulence of the
bathyscap~
and was quite a bit noisier
than this one and this one (indicating on blackboard
drawing).
It depends on whether the thing is going up
or down which way you get more turbulence.
You are
either in the wake or the leading edge.
DR. BROWN:
out there.
They are waiting to serve us some coffee
We are somewhat behind schedule, so please
don't take more than ten minutes.
(Thereupon, at 10:40 o'clock, A. M., a short recess
was taken.)
AFTER RECESS - 10:60 A. M.
DR. BROWN:
We will now move on to some of the
observations that were made on the bathyscaph of a biological and geological nature, and the first paper will
be given by Andreas Rechnitzer.
He will discuss the
biological and oceanographic observations.
DR. RECHNITZER:
My
primary mission at the Navy
37
Electronics Laboratory is to investigate the biological
factors that interfere with the propagation of sound.
Since we had an integrated program most of the acoustic
part has already been given.
Those people obliged me by
taking that particular facet.
One of the prin.cipal contributions of the bathy'scaph is to permit visual observations, and these we
made ample use ot.
Visibility, as has been explained
before, is quite good outside of it, through the plexiglass window.
Although it is 5
inches~h1eklt
cate in shape and permits a 90 degree or more
is
t~Wl­
nori~ontal
visibility.
The bathyscaph is also equipped with sets ot mercury
.
vapor
lamps outside.
These can be illuminated at Will,
and in the beginning were only used intermittently because
ot their expected short life, but this was corrected later
on and they were permitted to stay on for periods up to
one hour.
Leaving the surface 9 ambient light, of' course,
is great enough to provide good illumination in the surface
areas, and the Mediterranean is recognized for its crystal
clarity, but as soon as you submerge below the surf'ace you
begin to see the small particles that exist even in the
clearest water.
Descending slowly in the bathyscaph the
light, of course, d1~niShes and we reached what might be
termed the "twilight zone" at about 350 meters.
In my
38
material what I can see with the assistance of sunlight
alone is not too great relative to what you can see once
the artificial lights were turned on.
Usually we reserved
them until we reached about 500 meters.
Even to a depth
of 600 meters it was still possible to perceive the
silhouette of the bath7scaph.
Once we reached 500 meters
we turned on the outside lights.
At that time the abun-
dance of what we called "snow" appeared imm.ediatelJ'.
The
single effect of having a sharp light go on revealed
these minute
partiaul~s.
These have
b~~n
observed by
Beebe and Barton and they applied the term "snow."
this case we have "snQw" which is falling
of down.
~pward
In
instead
They appeared inanimate, and bioluminescence
doesn't become obvious until you reach the darker zone.
At about 500 meters, in this twilight zone, bioluminescence picked up markedly and as we descended down-to the
maximum depth -- I achieved 3500 feet -- bioluminescence
decreased somewhat.
sea floor.
It was obvious all the way to the
This particular year evidently it is not as
spectacular as last, wherein Piccard tells me there was
a spectacular display of bioluminescence all the way to
the sea floor, caused by salps or tunicates.
I made three dives, to 3500 meters for two, and one
to 470 meters, and in all cases we saw a continuous
distribution of life, from the surface to the bottom.
39
Most of the material was small and, as I said, inanimate
0
There was some indication of movement once we reached
the sea floor and settled down into a more or less fixed
position.
Here then we could see the smaller particles
moving around slightly, and, of course, -the larger animals,
such as fishes, could be viewed quite clearly.
We of course looked for a scattering layer.
We had
no idea of its presence before we left the surface, as no
echo-sounding equipment was availableo
Had we suspicioned
that the Italian Navy was so deficient in echo-sounders
we would, of course, have brought one along.
There was
no way of obtaining one in adequate time for this program.
The most interesting observations were made on the
sea floor itself.
The Mediterranean is generally recog-
nized as being rather deficient in animal life, but on
almost every dive fishes were seen on the sea floor$ even
to depths of 9000 feet.
Although there werentt great
numbers of the common genus$ cyclothone
j
a small fish one
or two inches in length 3 they were seen more often than
any other.
The hatchet fishes were not seen at all,
which was a surprise to
u~
because they had been reported
by the French, but we did see on our first dive, when we
turned on the light, a nice big deep sea cod swimming
lazily around.
He moved very slowly, without any
40
particular concern for the introduction of this very
bright
light~
and finally moved out of sight.
On another occasion we saw the largest fish of our
programj> and this was a 6-foot long$ or 2-meter conger eele
It didn't remain in the area very long, but we were
fortunate to get some pictures of it.
Outside we had an Edgerton
camera~
which could be
controlled 3 and we took pictures every five secondso
This was to provide us with 35 millimeter still photographs
0
One of the chaotic things that happened during
the summer was that, atter hand-carrying this valuable
material back to the Lahoratory, it was viewed hefore it
had been developed, and all was lost.
The most abundant animals on the sea floor were the
isopods, of one particular form and about a half an inch
long.
These were positively phototropic» attracted to
the lamps,l> and at times accumulated by the hundredso
We
had gotten some indication of them before by the photographs particularly by Edgerton, whereas these appeared
in the photographs as little white spots, as they did in
our owns but they are there in great abundance, and the
fact that they are there, along with these other fishes,
indicates there is an abundance of foodo
Holes were common everywhere that landings were made
on the sea flooro
Most of them were unoccupied
0
At least
41
this is the way they appeared, although they had a11'the
appearance of being rather fresh.
Most of them were about
half an inch across and 2 centimeters deep.
They also
occurred in great clumps or patches Jl but there was· no
consistency in the number of holes or any asymmetry, so
we can only surmise what animals can live in them.
We also noticed nemerteen wor.ms extending out of
their holes and feeding on the sea floor.
of
an1ma~
Active evidence
life on the sea floor was almost non-existent.
The sea floor was mud and showed evidence of animals
having been there by holes and fine tracks and movement
of the bottom sediment, which brought one particular
thing to mind 7 and that is the emphasis that has been
given in recent years to interpretation of deep sea cores
and What chronological history can be derived from these.
It was very obvious from the location we were working in
that these surface layers were really worked over by
bottom-living organisms.
The material sediments as far
down as a foot or more are brought to the sUI"face and
then redistributed by the existing current.
It was quite a pleasure to find that on the sea
f100r~
and in this fixed position that the bathyscaph takes,
that a current from about eight-tenths to 1 centimeter
per second was normally present.
This is south of Capri
and the direction of the current was almost always 270
42
degrees true.
west of Capri the current was about the
same rate but about 180 degrees true, so sediment south
and west of Capri probably receives a great contribution
from the Bay ot Naples and the Gulf of Salerno.
We
could see clouds of material passing through the illuminated areas that were outside of our sphere and where we
would stir up mud by dropping ballast and the landing of
the bathyscaph itself.
Organisms in the water would seem to be passively
carried along. 'ihe shrimp, medusae, worms, and even the
fishes, seemed to rest lazily in the water and were
carried along with it.
Rore often than not we detected
their presence in the water by their shadows on the sea
floor.
Observing them directly can be s,ometh1ng of a
chore.
There were some colored shrimp seen up off the
sea floor a few hundred meters, but for the most part
they were quite scarce.
GOing back to the current, the discontinuities
encountered by the acoustic people who were in it -- the
bathyscaph would rotate some tenths of degrees, even as
many as 50 per minute
would suggest there is some
external force acting on the bathyscaph.
These we had
hoped to investigate, using a very sensitive electronic
thermometer which was measured to a hundredths of a degree,
Centigrade.
Unfortunately, the sea water penetrated into
43
the sensitive element and rendered this inactive.
Follow-
ing other dives they were to pick me up and load on my
equipment and go back out, but the Italians decided the
weather was becoming
tempe~t~
and they couldn't
risk getting caught so far from shore in the bathyscaph
~ese
at.
0
are something we would like to go back and look
Also, a fine photograph brought back by Piccard from
one of these dives indicates that there are'additional
forces active, and I have that here to show you, in that
there are same extremely large ripple .arks, if we can
call them that.
They are 5 meters, 15 feet, from crest
to crest, and also fairly high.
We also installed a plankton sampler, but due to the
rush of things it decided not to work at the last moment.
This would provide us with something at whatever depth
we wish by remoted control within the bathyscaph.
May I have the Slides?
(Slide 1)
These photographs were taken from within
the bathyscaph, which gave us, then, some record, since
all of the Edgerton photographs were losto
The clarity
of the photographs taken through the plexiglass window
was amazingly good.
8000 meters.
crests.
These are the ripple marks seen at
The bathyscaph was sitting atop one of the
Then there is a trough over to a crest, then
over to a trough and up to another crest.
44
MR. LILL:
What depth?
DR. RECHHITZER:
3000 meters.
Then, what is probably
not too clear, there is a very large mound here that has
undoubtedly been brought up by animals and soae p1eces
detr1tus that has. come down fram the surface.
or
The sea
floor tor the most part was very clean, and we could not
determine what the an1mals m1gh.t, be feeding on,
larly these abundant 1sopods.
particu~
t
In it there were fragments
of the kind of grass which grows adjacent to the islands.
(Slide 2.)
These are 1sopods.
We were sitting on the sea tloor.
'fhts is at 3500 feet.
We made a rise to get
off the gu1de rope and settled back down, and we came
down within one foot of where we had taken oft.
mud was extruded trom underneath the sphere.
This
We landed
in the same spot, just offset enough so we could see it.
I will defer talking about the mud and let Dr. Dietz
tell you about that.
(Slide 3)
earlier.
This is a pile of ballast that was dumped
Here, not clearly shown, are a number of light
spots, which are the 1sopods.
These have been plaguing
us in underwater photographs for some time.
Edgerton has
photographs from 2700 feet down and they also show
crustaceans of various types, some of which include these.
(S11de 4)
Here are samples of the holes.
!he l1fe
on the sea floor was easily studied from within the
45
bathyscaph and is one of the primary things that the bathyscaph can be used for.
There was one other objective to the program, biologically speaking, which was to determine the size,
distribution and response of these animals to various
stiaulae, such as touch, being touched by the bathyscaph.
We saw there was some stimulation and response by bioluminescing organisms, but not a great shower as many of
you have seen on the surface going along on a dark night.
The light had Virtually no effect, except on one fish,
and he disappeared in great panic.
We used the underwater telephone frequently, and
sound generated by this 12 KC instrument didn't seem to
have any effect.
DR. BROWN:
DR. GALLER:
Are there any questions?
Dr. Rechnitzer, from your experience on
the bathyscaph, would you feel that this offers itself
as a nice way, or an efficient way, of studying the geometry of these particular aggregations, from a threedimensional point of view, something we have not been
able to do very well from a plankton sample?
DR. RECHNITZER:
We have an underwater camera, and
once this has reached a better state of development it
would be wonderful to attach this to the outside of the
bathyscaph.
The TRIESTE offers the opportunity to select
46
the area where you take your photographs and, once
observing the suspended material with the outside lights
and being able to select with the plankton sampler and
to take these photographs, I would say it would.
DR. GALLER:
Did you correlate your visual observa-
t10ns w1th acoust1c observat1ons horizontally?
DR. RECBNITZER:
No, because we d1dn't get into a
deta1led enough program to know exactly what the intens1ties of our sound sources were.
Later on we hope to be
able to use the length of the bathyscaPkl to make measurements of attenuat1on, veloc1ty changes at least, across
that distance throughout the entire water column.
DR.
BROWN~
Are there any other questions?
(No response.)
DR. BROWN:
If not, we will move on to our next
paper, on the geological observations and other observations made by the
DR.
DIETZ~
TRIES~,
by Robert Dietz, of ONR.
If I may, I will take a little liberty
with that title and say some other things as well, but
I might say first I am with the Office of Naval Research,
London, and our mission over there is, of course, to be
a listening post for developments of interest to the Navy_
This bathyscaph, when I first came over there, was
something I considered to be an important breakthrough,
so I have prepared a couple of technical memoranda
47
regarding it, and also a translation of some French
results on their dives.
I might pass this around, and
if anyone is particularly interested in receiving a copy
I will see that they get it if they will Just put their
names on this particular memoranda.
(Dr. Dietz presented the memoranda for circulation
among the attendees to the symposium.)
DR.
DIE~Z:
~e
other memoranda lam prepared to
pass is more or less of historical interest.
regard to the French results, I might
j~t
First, in
point out in
passing that the French, as of last June, had made 52 dives.
Piccard now, with our 26 dives this summer, has made 46,
and the French have made same more in the past summer, so
perhaps they have about 56 dives.
~e
French are now
building a new super-bathyscaph, designed to go to 10,000
meters, a three-man affair, very much along the lines of
the older one, with bigger engines, bigger electric power,
twice the amount of gasoline as the FNRS-3
has~
and also
the windows will be made so that they come to a very small
aperture inside, so it would be necessary to have an
optical arrangement to view through this window.
~is
is
necessary because or the high pressures of the 10,000
meters to which they expect to dive, and they presumably
plan to dive in the deep trenches because this factor of
10,000 meters is really met with there.
The ocean is
48
usually only
2~
miles deep.
,
I have copies of my partlcular dive, and I think
rather than go through it I can best pass this out and
you can read it at your leisure.
'!'hese are some of my
impressions during this one dive I was able to take.
(Dr. Dietz presented more papers to the attendees.)
DR.
DIETZ~
Alsop another publication of interest
is one prepared by Piccard and myself, which has just
come out on deep sea research, which is entitled "Oceanographic Observations by the Bathyscaph TRIESTE, 1953
to 1956."
'!'his only takes us up to the time preceding
the ONa sponsorship last summer, and the purpose of this
was to bring together some results that Plccard had
obtained, that had never been published, so they would
become a matter of proper scientific record.
We put this
out and if you are interested in this I can send copies
to anyoneo
I believe there is a copy Circulating of
this and if you will put your names on that I can send
that to yOUo
I have one more item to hand out.
Here are some
photographs Piccard has taken with black and white through
the window of the bathyscaph.
I will pass these around
and you may look at those as wello
impression of the bottom.
at the end.
It will give you some
I'd like to have those back
49
I have been asked to comment on the other observations.
I believe this means the foreign observations.
I'd like to point out first that it was originally written
into the contract with Piccard that European scientists
participate in this programo
This was done in view of the
fact that ONR was putting only $40,000 into this project,
which was just enough to cover the summer's operations
and made no allowance for the capital investment in the
craft and amortization, and so forth, but, more important3
because although the TRIESTE is owned by the Piccards,the
Italians, and the SWiss -- people don't generally realize
this -- they each consider it as their own, and it would
have been very undiplomatiC, for one thing, not to include
them in this, and, also, the program depended on the
collaboration of the Italian Navy for the use of the tug,
the Navalmec'canica and the company AGIP for the loan of
the gasoline, amounting to 28,000 gallons, so it was understood originally that Europeans could participate in half
the dives.
In actuality 9 dives were made by Europeans,
the rest being made by Americans, of the 26.
This included
4 by Italians, 3 by a Swedish oceanographer, and 2 by
Swiss nationals.
The Italians were, in three instances,
Naval Officers who were interested more.or.less in the
naval applications of this craft, and one was a Professor
Diceglie of Bari,
who took down a gravimeter and during
50
his dive, I understand directly from Dr. Rechn1tzer, he
made 7 stops going to the bottom, a depth of 820 meters,
in order to try to use this gravimeter by hoveringo
understand this was done successfully.
I
Also, he took
observations on the bottom, which shoed we could use
the gravimeter in the bathyscaph.
This came somewhat as
a surprise to me, because it seemed to me that although
the bathyscaph is very stable and below any "seat of the
pants n detectability of the accelerations, I thought
it would be too mueh motion. to attempt to use so•• thing
like a gravimeter.
Professor Jerlov of Gothenburg took three dives,
none to the bottom, all to moderate depths up to 600
meters, to measure light penetration, and this he has
done very successfully and wrote me a letter, but I don't
think the details are important here.
short, that it.
co~
He found
<9
in
be uniquely used for certain purposes,
especially for measuring the scattering of particles in
the sea.
Now the two SWiss nationals were a Michael rKobr
and A. Botteron 9 I believe his name was, both from the
University of Lansanne, one a botanist and one a geologist,
who made dives to from shallow to moderate depths.
So
much for that.
To pass on to some of the geological observations,
51
just briefly I would like to POiRt out that the bathyscaph
has three general useso
One is for getting away from
long conducter cables and putting rather elaborate equipment inside, and this is mainly of interest to the acoustic
people~
It could be used either for visual observa-
tions or, secondly, tor taking samples by some sort of
various devices with respect to what you see, which is
quite a different sort of
c~egory,
I think, in usageo
This taking samples with respect to what you see requires
a more sophisticated instrUDleRtatioB tb,p wbat we have ..
It was only partially achievedo
Rechnitzer had a plankton
sampler he could operate with respect to what he saw ~nd
same sampling was done on the bottom ..
The pure visual observations are more of interest
to the marine geologist and biologist than they are to
the physical oceanographer
0
I am not very amenable to
visual observation -- correction -- the zooplankton are
not very amenable
0
We had no echo-sounder aboard the Italian motor ship
and, also, there was no previous knowledge on the general
marine geology or even the biology of the area, so it was
difficult to really plan a useful dive..
In fact, on my
dive I had hoped to go down at the base of a steep slope,
but we landed out in a flat plain and on soft mud bottom.
On my dive I considered the water to be stagnant, but on
52
later dives currents up to eight-tenths of one centimeter
were observed by other peopleo
As you heard in one case, there are large ripples on
the bottom, giving visual indications of same currents
operating.
This is exceedingly interesting s since the
Mediterranean is essentially a non-tidal area, and it
is thought that the currents in the Atlantic and elsewhere must be principally tidal, but here we have currents
which are probably not tidal and require some other
explanation.
I might point out9 regarding physical observations
as well, the French have reported a crystal-olear layer
of water right close to the bottoms within a very few
meters of the bottomp and I think the French have in fact
done this.
Their observations have been carefully
made~
and we did not find this in our dives at all, to my
knowledge, although this observation must be very carefully made, because once you see the bottom you are so
intent on the bottom you tend to forget the water itself
and you don't look at the scattering particles in ito
Rechnltzer and I tried not to be overcome by our interest
in the bottom and we did not discover any crystal-clear
layer within some "area of the bottom.
The bottom on my
dive was soft mud, with a good many holes
occasions rather firm bottom was found.
0
On other
You saw the one
53
where the pile of ballast was resting on the bottom.
A rather interesting aspect of this bottom on my
dive was the remarkable fluidity of the bottom mud.
It
isn't plastic and coherent like ordinary terrestrial
SOils, and I am sure this is because of the different
sort of weathering you have on the ocean bottom.
When
we would drop a bit of ballast we would get a doughnut
column of mUd.
This to me was quite convincing regard-
ing the possibility of turbidity currents, which are
now widely invoked to explain marine
s~d~el1tatj.QI1
peculiar in cable breaks, and so on, but once you see
these clouds set up you become quite convinced that such
turbidity currents can be quite easily set upo
If there
was a slope it is easy to visualize how this might begin
to move down and pick up more materials and develop a
real turbidity current.
The TRIESTE has floodlights,
~wo
two spots aft, coming down from above.
always very clear.
spots forward and
The water is
It was full of scattering particles
but it was very clear, and we could see as much as 60 feeto
The limitation was not imposed by the clarity but by the
strength of the lights.
With stronger lights we could
have done better, I am sure.
One thing about these lights,
they are good for general viewing but not for viewing
the plankton in the sea.
54
Several years ago I had an opportunity to go down
in a Japanese diving bell, the KUROSHIO, off Japan, and
on that occasion we had a beam of light right below us
going out like the headlights of a car.
and see, "Well, there's a copepod."
. on the TRIESTE.
We could focus
I couldn't do this
We couldn't identify what they were and,
due to the fact we were moving, we couldn't tell if they
were moving or not.
One thing about the biology Andy didn't bring out was
that we confirmed the French observation that you have
kind of a maximum. of
500 or 600
tt
snow " of these particles at about
meters.~en
it thiris out again.
In general
the French reported that the water near the surface
becomes clearer, but I, and I think Andy, found this may
not be valid, because you can't see these scattering
particles when there is a lot of ambient light aroundo
If you would dive at night in the TRIESTE you could probably make a true assessment of the amount of scattering
particles all the way down.
The amount of stuff you see
in a comparatively sterile sea like the Mediterranean is
indeed surprising.
It is generally known, of course, that you have an
upper layer in the ocean, known as the euphotic layer$
where plants can grow, and below that you have quite a
different tranSition to the zone where only animal life
55
can exist.
I don't believe it is generally realized that
there is a very important second transition in the ocean,
and this is down at the level of light penetration, and
this perhaps is -- well, to the human eye it was 500 meters
in my ease, and for Rechnitzer 700 meters, and to deep
sea fish it might be 700 or 800 meters -- but below a
certain level there is a sudden transition in the ocean,
and all the animals above that are controlled by -- their
rhythms are controlled by light.
They have a sense of
day and night and they migrate, and the whole problem
of the scattering layer comes in there, but below this
layer you come to a zone where there is no light and,
therefo., no time.
All time is measured really in
terms of light, of astronomical quotation and revolution,
and, also, there are no seasons and the animals have
trouble, I suppose, knowing when to spawn, and that sort
of thing, but this is quite apparent to me, that we entered
the zone down deep where there is a remarkable transition
in the whole life down there, and this is something, I am
sure, that the future of the bathyscaph will open up
this field of observation in this transition zone from
the upper part to the lower part of 'the ocean.
NOW, the geological observations are not particularly
impressive, and I hadn'texpecte.d them to be, because the
TRIESTE is not a research ship or tool in being.
It is
56
something that has to be developed further.
thing we realized.
This is some-
We only wanted to demonstrate that
~t
could be used and that it had great possibilities.
The reason that we couldn't do very much in the way
of marine geology is that we had no echo-sounder to spot
ourselves. and no previous knowledge of the
would off
California~
area~
like we
for example, where we know it very
well from other data.
Secondly, although in theory the TRIESTE can move
along and has propellers, and so forth, in actual fact,
for the purposes of this operation we couldn't use this
horizontal propulsion because we were involved in making
a series of dives and it took a week to charge the
batteries, so we had to conserve all the electric power.
In the TRIESTE these are carried internally in the cabin
and are sealer cells.
In the case of the FNRS-3 the French
have large lead batteries external, which can be jettisoned,
and they have a good deal more power to work with9 so their
horizontal ability is much greater, and with their new
super-bathyscaph they will even increase this non-electric
power.
So the value, of course, of these observations on
the deep sea floor is in being able to make a horizontal
traversal and being able to see the sediment and eumorphology, and this involves a whole spectrum of features
o
One of my overall impressions of this dive -- and I
57
think of everyone -- was the friendliness of the deep
sea.
There is, of course, this hydrostatic pressure to
deal with, but once you see how the bathyscaph is constructed you see that the problem. has been solved •.
Our difficulties in operation were not involved
with those of pressure sealing.
Our
dittic~t1.sw.re
involved with Sea States 2, 3 and 4 when operating on
the
It is quite apparent that the limiting
surf~ce.
difficulties were the inability of the· craft to cope
wi th the rough surtace, and it .e only Jlad a eathyscaph
which could leave port and go down deep right away, we'd
have it made.
If we had one which could bea bit smaller
and carried piggy-back on a mother ship, so you could
take it out and put it down on a nice day -- I have a
few comments here regarding -- well, I suppose these
should be deferred to this afternoon -- regarding the
modifications of the bathyscaph.
I will defer these
comments, then, and close now.
MHo LILL:
Is there any indication that this "snow"
is that of a chemical preCipitation?
DR
0
RECHNITZER:
biological.
I am personally convinced it is
It's not a sediment.
It's flocculated
organiC material, because it's flocculated like snowflakes.
MR. LILL:
Is there any indication that at 300 meters,
where this seems to be concentrated, it has any effect in
58
the acoustic work?
He said it seems to be the heaviest
there.
DRo DIETZ:
DRo
500 to 600 meterso
GALLER~
May I speak to that for a moment, please?
This is purely an intuitive guess on my part, but I strongly
suspect that we will find that there is acoustic relationship between this so-called "snow" and your deep scattering
layer.
I come back to Dr. Dietz' comments earlier that he
felt these particles were not large enough to play an
important role in the deep scattering layer.
I hope my
interpretation was correct on your commentso
This may
well be trueo
On the other hand, it overlooks the fact
that many times these organisms, although individually
too small to represent significant acoustic targets,
really are concentrated in clusters or aggregates which
collectively may represent an acoustic target of some
significance
0
We carried out some preliminary measurements in a
completely different area, and we find that if you were
to calculate the real size from the acoustic size of
some of these particles you would be completely misled
0
They would appear to be much larger than they actually
are, but the fact is they occur in aggregates and, therefore, they do represent acoustic targets of some significance.
59
DRo DIETZ:
Regarding this scattering layer, the
de£inition is generally defined as something which'
migrates, and I don't think these would migrate.
sume -- and I am quite sure
I pre-
there is a biological
population at this level, too, which is quite thick, of
small fish, which gene.rally you get on the echo-sounders,
but I am convinced that what you say is true.
Infinite
particles will scatter sound, although the sound people
sometimes tell me No, because we have made experiments
echo-sounding on the mud layer.
from the mud
You get a beautiful echo
clou~s.
DR. FROSCH:
It's more likely to be a function of
the density of the individual particles.
From the
description one would guess these particles were pretty
much the same.
In the mud layer the individual particles
differ quite markedly.
DR. BROWN:
Are there any other questions?
If not,
we will now start what we hope will be a group discussion.
The discussion will be led by Dr. Allen Vine, of Woods
Hole, and by Arthur Maxwell of ONRo
I£ you two gentlemen will come up here, it would be
better.
Within our Committee on Oceanography, which has Just
been established in the National Academy of Sciences and
of which I happen to be Chairman, we are establishing now
60
a panel for the purpose of making reoommendations
0011-
cerning machines like the bathyscaph, and Dr. Vine is
going to be Chairman of that particular panel.
I would propose that you Just fire questions directly
at them or, if you want to give a comment yourself, feel
free to do
SOo
Please state your name, and please speak
loudly so we can hear you.
MHo MAXWELL:
Before we start, may I just make a
comment or two, to perhaps evoke a little discussion?
In the course of evaluating our seientific results
and possibly going through some of the difficulties
involved in obtaining these, perhaps we can evaluate the
bathyscaph and its research potentialitieso
Dr.
Diet~
A moment 'ago
mentioned that the modification should be left
for this afternoon's session.
I don't feel this is true.
I feel perhaps modifications for the scientific use of
this should be perhaps discussed this morning in this
discussiono
I think this afternoon's program should be
left strictly to the possible military potentialities
of the bathyscapho
I think the program is fairly well
'tt#'!" "-',
lines:""~
, ,'7"
set up along the'se
,~'
,
I would like to briefly state what ONR's position
is at this time.
In fact, Jacques Piacard was over to
Washington about a week ago and we discussed possible
future operations with the bathyscaph, and it is ONR's
61
feeling at this time that what we should do as a minimum
is continue, perhaps, over in the Mediterranean, the same
sort of program which we carried out this past year.
However, we feel that we would be on much better ground
if we could bring the bathyscaph over to the United
states and have it more in our own operational control.
If it were brought to the Atlantic, for example, it
would probably be given to one of the laboratories -- one
of the Navy laboratories or one of the contract-operated
laboratories -- and, in view of the deep water Situation,
would possibly be dived out of either Bermuda or San Juan.
In the Pacific I think it would be very probable, if it
were brought to the Pacific, it would be operated out of
NEL, out of San Diego, because of the close proximity of
Scripps.
There is also another possibility, that we might want
to take this out and investigate the trenches with it.
I think it is with a little bit of embarrassment we find
they had to take advantage of the design of the Swiss
Navy's bathyscaph and the Italian Navy's help, or else
we would not have had the opportunity to use the bathyscaph.
DR. VINE:
There are a few things I would like to
say, to try to get the discussion going a little more.
There are only a few people who went down in the bathyscaph.
62
From listening to their pregramland what the,. <ii4, YOll
can see that several different kinds of things were doneo
I know that the people that went down had much bigger
plans they woUld have liked to have attempted if time had
been available.
Probably half the people here would like
to see other kinds of work done, that they are interested
in, so it seems to me we should regard what we have
heard this morning as merely being representative of the
kind of things that can be done.
I have a few remarks on some of the things .tllat.were
said.
One was as to whether the physical oceanographer
would have very much to learn from this with regard to
temperatures and currents.
I have a feeling that there
is a great deal that can be done in observing the biological creatures in the ocean, because they are probably
much more sensitive to the current and salinity changes
and the temperatures than we are.
Such things as sharp
stratification, which the French had reported, may be
occasioned by very small changes in temperature or salinity or current which they respond to, and have really
quite a large effect on the way the ocean is made up,
although to our instruments it doesn't look like a very
important phenomena.
The second is: there were some remarks made as to
the interference with sonar of the creatures in the ocean.
63
I think that when we use the word "interference" this is
predominantly a negative
and that what we should
term~
try to think of more is the positive term.
completely, to the
scienti5t~
The ocean is
a fact as it exists.
To
the military person it should be regarded as being completely neutral.
For example, the oceans were an inter-
ference to land armies and the deep seas were an interference to the surface
Navy~
but it seems to me lnthe
so-called interferences we should regard these as new
regions and new areas of interest which we should explore.
MR. BASCOM:
I'd like to speak for a moment apout
where I think this whole program might
headed.
event~lly
be
It seems to me it is not too soon to think per-
haps five or more years ahead in terms of what the ultimate vehicle might be for deep sea research and how we
might go about getting this.
It seems to me there are
other ways of gaining support except by asking the Navy
directly for funds, and one way would be to go to the
United States public for money.
is favorable.
Right now the climate
This is what the Piccards
did~
and look.
In order to interest the public you need visual
items so they can grasp what you have in mind and visualize this and see what it is you want to do and hear your
story, and I suggest that what the bathyscaph needs, in
terms of equipment that you might put on the present one
64
in order to get results, are some things which are a bit
gimmicky, in a sense, but in the end will do you as much
good as the present scientific measurements you are making.
One thing I have thought you needed was a set of prosthetic
hands like those used in "hot" labs, so you can actually
turn the bottom and poke at animals and hold nets and
perhaps test things with it.
I also think you need a
much better photographic system.
The present pictures
that came back, taken from the inside, are lousy.
What
you need is a continuously operatabl~,35~rntn Caln~I~~;.~,,>
the best film you can get in it, with a lens-splitter as
a lookout at the ocean all the time.
Of what was taken
this time Jacques Plccard brought what he thought was the
cream of them, and he had ten pictures not of very good
quality.
If you want support, you have got to have good
movies of what is going on at the bottom.
You want a bathyscaph that can be used as a corer,
to take cores of the bottom at some place in the ocean
where you are particularly interested, perhaps a large
area of sea mounds, or same other particularly interesting
facet of the bottom.
This, of course, is quite a differ-
ent vehicle from what you have now, but it's not too soon
"
to plan for it, and, finally, I think you should have
prepared a series of artists' conceptions, in the corniest
sense of the words, of what this ultimate vehicle might
look like, and these should bear no relationship to your
hopes of your chance of getting them today, but only as
a means of capturing the public support.
MR. LILL:
What are the two greatest limitations,
or what are the greatest limitations in the present
TRIEST.E for scientific research?
Can we hear some dis-
cussion on that?
DR. VINE:
It would seem to me it has been pretty
clear from the beginning, and it was brought up this
morning, that mobility is the principal problem.
This
was compounded this summer because the first part of
the mobility was getting to Italy, and the second part
of the mobility was having to remain within a Sea State 2
when operating.
MR. LILL:
That is the weather limitation.
DR .. VINE:
Yes" and then, when' one was submerged,
with the fact that the battery capacity was so lOW, one
did not have much horizontal mobility.
MR. LILL:
I would like to hear some comments from
some of the engineers here on how you think it is possible
to overcome the horizontal immobility.
It seems to me
we'd have to get a great deal more horizontal mobility
in this" and I wonder if it is possible to do this on
the present bathyscaph without too much expense and without too much design difficulty.
66
..DR.
BROWB~
Was your comment directed to this?
MR. KIELHORN:
The present bathyscaph has two air-
buoyancy chambers located all the way forward and all the
way aft, which are flooded with sea water to bring it
down to neutral buoyancy.
When these are pumped out and
she is on the surface she floats, with a
one foot and a half.
000
of about
Being a very crude shape, and being
towed, it means everyth1ng you touch is coming aboard.
To compound this difficulty, the conning tower is wide
open, and the hatch is open, which means when being towed
the seas which come aboard go directly in the conning
tower, and it requires the hatch be closed at all times
when being towed.
I believe you can get around some of its horizontal
immobility, if you Will, by merely closing this door
here (indicating on blackboard), permitting perhaps access
from aft instead of forward by at least a splash-proof
door, and by giving a little more of a boat shape forward.
There is one danger in making this look like a boat.
That is when it is submerged and rising.
If you have a
flat deck you are going to set up an oscillation so you
will roll on the way up.
Pic card has thought of releasing
a parachute drogue to reduce the amplitude of oscillation.
I am sure with the same hull you can get at least one sea
state better out of it, and possibly two.
67
.DR. LEWIS:
Another difficulty in mObility occurs
when you tow the bathyscaph.
end of its tow-line.
correct~
It also oscillates on the
This shouldn't be too difficult to
either, I don't believe.
The French have built
keels on their's, which I think have solved the problemo
MR
design.
0
KIELHOlUf:
If' we are thinking of this patticular
But the very addition of a stabilizing tin aft
has helped imme.asurably, an4·i! there is any rudder
control for use on the surface, attached to the stabilizer,!)
I think it will tow fairly well
.--.
o
now
0
0
It needs to be very much better than it is
Apparently it could withstand towing in a higQ
sea state, and at about a Sea State 5 the difficuity
,
there was that the ballast tanks pounded too much.
They
are free so they can fallout easily; but s.ome kind ot
emergency clamp on the ballast tanks to keep them in
place in high seas should be available, and :m.a1{e them
removable.
MR. KIELHORN:
Those ballast tanks are about five
tons apiece and they do slap, but I don't know if that
is putting a tremendous strain on the hull.
It makes a
lot of noise because it's a piece of tin, but I don't
know if it really
MRo LILL:
d~ges.
These are fine suggestions, but can we
separate the power supply that runs this little engine
68
(indicating) from the power supply that runs the total
bathyscaph, so that, for example, when you send the thing
down to the bottom, and you have a ship on the top -- it
could sink to the bottom and at the same time drive the
bathyscaph along and see what the bottom really looks
like that is siv1ng certain effects
DR ..
VINE~
OR
the top?
It seems to me that the th1ng that can add
the most to sublllergeability 1s to go to external lead
batteries
0
This will provide more space inside and permit
more capacity outside, and then one can either change
the batteries out at sea or can give them a quick recharge
fram the mother shipo
MIL KIELHORlh
Piecard had this very thing in mind
in my last conversation with himo
put them inside again
0
He said he would never
His batteries are all open" so
you can brush against the contactso
He definitely wants
to keep his batterie,s out of that gondola
MR$
DIETZ~
make-shirt~
power.
"
0
Piccard realizes this battery is just a
The French one has ten times more electric
It has them external, which could be jettisoned,
and the new super-bathyscaph, I think, will have 100 times
more electric powerc
Also, Piccardws has a high tension
system, and the French, I think" has a 28-volt system,
which I think is much easier to handle, and it ties in
with all their aircraft so they can use aircraft accessories
69
for their instruments o Plccard reallzes
else does
j
j
and everyone
that this is an obsolescent craftc
Even when
it was originally built they built this thing in ter.ms
of what money they eould scrounge» and very small amounts
at that s and this 1s no credit to modern technologyo
It
never was, and certainly isnWt todayo
Several things can be done to improve the bathyscaph
0
It can be used, but we are very much better oft to want
a vehicle which pays for itselt,9 research-wise
think this one does
0
I
0
You can do several things
0
don~t
One
thing which is widely known,9 of course, is to use different flotation substances
or
j
like lithium, Which has a denSity
054 compared to 070 and is rathereampress1ble in
water
0
Lithium is a solution, but recently the idea has
been suggested to me in England -- and I know it is
widely known here
to use some lighter cab1n.. and the
9
answer hez:e seems to be to use a fiberglass cabin impregnated with a resins> and I have talked to people in England
and some Aerojet people on the West Coast and they think
th1s is feasibleo
~is
has a density of only 103 instead
of 705, and it seems possible you could build essentially
a buoyant sphere which could go to
features
0
If it wasn't buoyant
2~
you~d
miles with our safety
only need a small
amount of gasolene to work something like thato
Regarding the public sponsorsh1P9 the public 1s
70
alre'ady behind this thing
0
There is no difricul ty in
getting the public to support this.
It's only necessary
for the Navy and other people to realize the public is
behind it and is behind themo
As Allen Vine once told me,
it is evident that the future development of submarines
must be to go deeper and quieter, and there is ample
military reason as well as ample scientific reason for
doing thiso
One more point is that the ocean
botto~
is only
2~
miles away, and people are getting a lot of money now to
go to the moon, which is 240,000 miles away
is only
2~
miles away» and it's
space of all the people combined
DRo GALLERg
3~
0
The ocean
times the living
0
It seems to me we are skirting one of
the fundamental issues hereo
that rather than go
I would like to suggest
~ediately
into the gadgeteering
end of how can we improve this particular vehicle we
first reach some agreement, or at least put forth what we
feel the research potential of this vehicle iso
It
seems, to be more specific.!' I would suppose.!> that really
what we are talking about here are the developmental
characteristics, but in order to reach the point of
developmental characteristics let's set up some "operational requirements
o "
What are the research possibilities of the bathyscaph?
71
Now 3 as a biologist it seems to me there
a~e
at least
two major general types of research capabilities of this
vehicle::
(1)
taking advantage of this friendly depth
tha t Dr. Dietz mentioned.l' to set up a
II
submerged anchor
station" that would permit maintaining observations in
situ, which is something that we cannot do todayo
Prac-
tically all of the data that we have received fram the
great depths is based upon pulling up samples and then
analyzing them, either on board Ship or maintaining
them in vitro back in the laboratorY3 and this is not
the same as studying an in situ situation
0
The other aspect is the fact thats tor the first
time.\' it becomes possible to carry out three-dimensional
integrated environmental measurements over a fairly long
period of time, albeit within a
l~itedspace
but to be able to carry out a considerable
and distance,
n~ber
of
measurements simultaneously and corr"elate them with visual
observations at the great depths is really
~"
't;his is what
I would consider to be a technological break-throughp
from the standpoint of the bathyscaph3 as far as
pelagic biological research 1s concerned
Q
bathy~
Specif1callY9
you mentioned -- or I think it was Allen Vine
tba.~Jllen­
tioned it -- the possible relationship between organisms
and minute changes in temperatureo
We have a great deal
of information to suggest that there is a very definite
72
relationship.
Herr1ng$ for example, may be caused to
change major migratory patterns by changes in 1 degree
Centigrade or less$ and there is every indication that
cope pods may be influenced by changes of less than a
half a degree Centigrade, so here we have a submerged
laboratory with whieh s if we put on the proper gadgetry
and are able to extend the life of the laboratory under
water, we are able to do marvelous things we couldn't
possibly do fram aboard a ship on the surface.
~B.-o
S}:
-:- I was particularly in.terested in same
of the earlier comments, part1cularly Dr. DietzVs, with
regard to buoyant spheres.
In another connection we
have had occasion to study this-matter in some detail,
i
and I think you will be interested in the slides that
will be shown this afternoon, to find that you can
develop a vehicle that will operate satisfactorily at
the same depths as the
T.RIES~E$
that has positive buoyancy.
It will not be necessary to go to some of the fragile
and delicate buoyancy chambers that this present vehicle
has.
I mention this now only because I think it is well
worthwhile to recognize that the degree to which one
pursues this interest in underwater 11te is likely to be
condit1oned by practical problems of sea state 9 and since
this has come into so much discussion this morning I think
73
it would be worthwhile to consider re-evaluating the type
of vehicle necessary to accomplish this
~ssiono
It is
pOSSible, of course, that one should proceed with an
available vehiele,P but,P consider1ng its many identifiable
limitations, it might be worth taking another look at
it~
a completely different apprf.')ach" and one tb.at would Ilake
use of much more of the technology of structures and
concepts that the Bavy has developed, and recognize that
you can get a submersible vehicle that will go to enormous
depths satisfactorily"
MHo MAXWELLg
Certainly I feel that we should proceed
along both short and long term programsln this a and I
think perhaps maybe the short-term program might involve
,
further use of our existing capability" but I am quite
convinced that in this we should not lose s1ght of a
longer term objective of getting better veh:lcles,9 if this
is a good technique o
DRc LEWISgI would like to mention» before we g~
. too far from the existing
bathyscaph~
that its utility
could be greatly improved 9 or perhaps I should say its
efficiency
states
0
took to
0
The problem last summer was not only sea
The biggest problem was actually the time it
char~
the batteries"
This could easily be over-
come/j even with the present design$' simply by having a
number of sets of batteries on hando
If we had more than
tJ
",.
'.,',
."
74
one :pilot to
.
op~rat,the
bathJ8'caph<and a llumber of,sets
of batteries, we could certainly set, four or five times
as many dives as we did thisl.ast sUllUner.
..
D. IUI.WEI.iL:Ye~,o·
Ithiiucit should be pointed out
that we we"e working 'lmQ.er about as adverse conditions
as we could expect. ,'!here .•as a langU.9.,ebarrier • We
had to deal with the
Itali~
Navy, and they at times
cancelle« the whole operation 'an <heur before they were
scheduled, and there were many living difficulties over
there thathaapered the progt'Ul.lth1nk its ettlC1el'lCY
coUld have been increased by atactorof 5 by qperatlng
at American standards.
D. LOMASK:
IB,regard to the suggestion on the
bathyscaph as being ideal tor making biologicalobservations in situ" the same thing occurs for many basic
acoustic experiments as well.
For example,jl there are
acoustic velocity or acoustic attenuation studies which
could be made in situ using the bathyscaph,ll and I guess
up to now it's
DR.
VINE~
beendoD~in
laboratory measurements.
I think a very important thing here with
regard to the acoustics phenomena, or acoustic experiments,
is that, if you have space to take
alG~e;.1lt'1t.);:,
anyone
acoustician and his gear, he can try his experiDlent without a long drawn out period of developmento
One can
certainly do a great deal of work on the acoustic work
75
with the ends of electric wires.
This has been done and
much more of it will be done.
Take this last summer's work, for example.
The
frequency range they covered was rather large, and they
did this rather large range of frequency studies with
relatively simple equipment.
I think this is one of the
ear-marks of having a laboratory that goes to depths
rather than aboard a sB1p on the surface.
BRJo FROSCH:
There were several things, from an
.•.,.>/
acoustic point of view.
One already mentioned is
dispensing with cables.
This means that right away you
can go to making measuremeRts of relatively high frequency
•
at deep depths without gett1ng 1nto a whole class of
telemetering problems, which have cross-talk problems
which have never been
You
~lso
r~olved
for high frequenc1es.
now have the possibility of a horizontal beam
of known orientation and variable orientation.
It also
offers the possibility of fairly continuous measurement
with depth, whereas with previous techniques, particularly
for ambient nOise, one could only take spot measurements
with depth, because of the difficulty of moving the hydrophones up and down, because of their connections with the
surface.
DR. RECHNITZER:
In addition to this, if they only
considered a second bathyscaph, then you have both the
76
sound source and receiver at the same
level~
and this
means you can make your measurements at precise depths
throughout the entire water column.
T.bis could be
extended on to greater lengths if we had two bathyscaphs.
Of
course~
from a military aspect I think this is quite
essential that we have two of them.
Mr. Chairman, there are people in this
MR. LILL:
room that were brought here on purpose because they have
the conviction that all these things can be done with
unmanned
vehicles~
their favor.
and they have many good pOints in
Their pOints, I think, should really be
'made a matter of record in this discussion.
I wonder if
it's possible to get some of them to make some remarks?
DR. BROWN:
Does anyone want to make any remarks
along these lines?
DR. SPILHAUS:
I think the complete justification
of the bathyscaph is Simply the irresistible urge of
people which exists to go to remote places where they
haven't been.
Unfortunately, this is not a compelling
enough argument for our people who have the money to
develop these things.
This is unfortunate because uses
develop after you have been somewhere, so that the whole
question of detail -- I have been extremely interested
in listening to these secondary arguments of why you have
to have people go to places, although I don't need them
77
at all to convince me.
These are extremely
but there are secondary things to that.
interesting~
If this primary
argument isn't compelling to us, other people are going
to beat us to it, so I feel this whole discussion of
manned versus unmanned 1s completely secondaryo
my opinion that people are golng to go
wher~ver
It is
you
send instruments.
DR. BROWN:
MR. COUPER:
Any other comments?
I'd like to point out that test vehicles
of two bathyscaphs for things like plotting a beam pattern,
which you can't do in the ocean now, because it takes a
little more weight and handling capaCity, would be very
handy.
DR. RAFF:
-
It seemed to me that the Number One prob-
lem was getting in and out of the bathyscaph in rough
seas without having water go down the hatch.
It seemed
to me this is a very minor thing and would permit you
to operate over the deck remotely -- no?
DR.
RECHNITZER~
Well, there are also other deck
operations that have to be handled by the deck crew, and
they are subject to being washed overboard in rough seas,
so the opening of certain valves has to be done manually.
DR.
VINE~
For the purpose of clarification, I
would like to state that while it was said water would
go into the conning tower, this bathyscaph has normally
78
a wet conning tower and not a dry one.
MR. KIELHORN:
In the same regard, talking about
those valves opening fore and aft on those two compartments, it's a delicate operation.
A man has to be on
deck, and he is at the extreme end of the ship and, as
such, gets overboard.
These are very crude valves,
screwed down by hand.
There's not a reason in the
world why a lever type valve can't be put on so that the
conning tower is self-bailing, so that it will float.
DR. RECHNITZER:
Also, you have to leave the mother
ship to reach the bathyscaph, and this is hazardous.
MR. MAXWELL:
I think there are more problems in
rough weather than meet the eye here.
I think the possi-
bility of losing the bathyscaph during rough weather is
part of the game.
Certainly the Italian Navy did not
want to go out in the rough weather because of handling
operations, putting the lines aboard it, the compressed
air tanks, and so on.
DR. VINE:
It's a fair weather operation.
It's a little bit like servicing seaplanes
in rough weather.
It seems to me you can redesign to operate to perhaps
one or two more sea states, and if you take it into an
area which is predominantly good weather you can work
half of the time instead of a quarter of the time.
DR. FROSCH:
I'd like to jump back to Dr. Spilhaus's
79
remark and try to bridge it over to the practical point
of view.
One thing you are doing when you go down in
this thing is that you are replacing rather inadequately
controlled servo-mechanisms, which are the best we have
got, namely with the scientist himself, who is sitting
right on the spot and not at the wrong end ofa not very
adequate cable.
In either direction he can decide what
to do and know what is going on, rather than try inc to
deduce what might be happening to give him the peculiar
result.
This is the real thing.
When you design 80me-
thing to go on the end of the cable and something odd
happens, all you know is that something odd has happened,
and you have a very small chance of discovering anJthing
other than what you have built into the end of it, into
..
the equipment at the end of the cable, whereas, 1t you
are sitting there yourself you can correlate a lot more
data than what you could possibly build into the end of
the cable.
You can get so much more information for a
reasonable expense, rather than what you can get for any
reasonable expense of cable.
DRo BROWN:
In arguing this point a friend of mine
made a very nice statement.
He asked the question:
what
would the voyage of the BEAGLE have been like if Charles
Darwin had been replaced by a motion picture camera?
DRo
FROSCH:
,
I don't think anyone here would care to
80
do any neomorphology from a balloon he could hang on the
end of a cable.
DRo VINE:
I think the present bathyscaph can serve
to open up new problemso
After we once learn enough
about a problem, to where we can visualize it very well,
then we can probably build an instrument that would do
it better, but while we are still looking for different
kinds and pOints of view about this ocean we work in
it seems to me we need breadth rather than depth.
DR. REVELLE:
The ability of training scientists to
go down to depths around 200 feet to look at the sea
floor has in fact given us a whole new level of understanding and raised a whole new host of problems, and
instead of being in the top 200 feet you are opening up
the whole vast depth of the oceano
I would like to speak for a moment about the geological, what we can see would be the use of this to
the geologistso
the human eye.
science.
The essence of geology is the use of
It is essentially an observational
You have with this contraption the ability to
look, and for a long time.
Just let me cite four different kinds of problems
which would illustrate the advantages of being able to
use the human eye.
In both the Pacific and Atlantic there
are many ground ancient islands, islands known now, at
81
depths of 3000 to 6000 or more reato
The question isg
just what were these things like when they were at the
sea surface
-
9
Were they gradually cut off from the sides?
We are almost certain they were islands that were cleaned
off by the wave erosions, but then what was the subsequent
history?
Did they remain at the surface or near the
surface so that something grew on them?
on them?
We know they were
Islands~
Were there beaches
because we have
collected shallow water reef fossils of animals that
could only have lived at the
surfaoe~
but we don't have
any clear idea of their history when they were islands
0
'!'his gives a great deal of inference tha.ttilli early
.
history could be obtained if you could go down and look
at them
0
Sec-ondly, at Eniwetok there are now on the bottom
fairly course sediments with ripple marks which look like
wave ripple marks» which we think were caused by the
periods of the order of 20 seconds at depths of somewhere around 1500 to 2000 meterso
impossible
0
This is completely
There arenit supposed to be any waves of a
period of 20 seconds
b~g
enough to move the sands around
on the bottom and cause ripple markso
Just below the
r
sand layer there are very fine-grained clays» clays that
fossils indicate are Pliocene or older, or Neoceneo
What
is it about this area that in the past allowed very fine
82
sediments to accumulate and now allows only sparse amounts
of coarse sediments p which apparently have been shifted
recently by rather short period waves?
One question, for
example, is whether these waves now exist or whether they
ex,isted during the lee Age 9 when perhaps there was a great
quantity of material being washed out of the lagoon of
the coral atolls and perhaps causing great turbidity
currents
0
We'd like to see whether these are now being
formed or whether they are fossilQ
The third is the problem of sticking spears into the
bottom» or instruments for measuring the heat flows of
the sea flooro
How do these contraptions work?
is a problem of measuring the heat flowo
There
It's quite a
difficult one 9 because the cable must be paid out and
...
the thing must be paid outo
during this time?
happens to it?
What happens to the cable
Does this get pulled sideways?
So if you look at the instr'Ullllftnts
What
~rou
lower from a ship and see how they work",· i.tUs a third
very important geological thing
0
This has been already
effectively done down to 200 feet with the aqualung
0
The fourth is to actually make geological experimentso
One Dro Dietz already mentioned is a beautiful example»
to see if it is possible to cause and follow a turbidity
current
0
They so far are almost entirely theoreticalo
We think they must ex1st 9 but nobody has actually seen
83
one, although we have seen things that might possibly be
turbidity
cur~ntso
Also» there is the question of their
velocity and relationship of velocity to density and
the whole transient
state~
and how fast they change» and
things that I think we just have to observe» so in four
different ways,p (a) studying geologieal structures,
(b) studying geological processes, (c) studying the working of geologlcal instrum.ents, and (d) making geologlcal
experlments, this thing is potentially an extremely
powerful geolog1cal,toolo
Itdepends'essentiall10n
what you call a good servo-mechan1sm» and I "ould prefer
to call 1t the use of a human eye to look at it and see
what Is happen1ngo
The geology da:ta of the earth, would
be considerably more primitive than they are if
J~e
-,',:'
had to make all our observations by lowering long steel
fingers
0
DRo BROWNg
I believe that our time is rll..'I"ln.:ing out,
and we are goi,ng to have to bring this morning q s session
to a close
o
I am supposed to summarize what has been
said and» as you can see, that is a physical impossIbility
I believe as a result of the mornlng t s session we
have pretty general agreement among the scientists that
vehicles of the bathyscaph type can give us the possibility of making new kinds of measurements that could
not be made before 9 and new kinds of observations that
0
84
could not be made beforeo
In addit1on» I believe there
1s general agreement that the present bathyscaph can be
mod1fied to make it more generally useful and that the
present bathyscaph design should be more or less looked
upon as a counterpart of the Wright brothers i plane»
that there are many improvements that can be made» and"
if a program of some sort is established" that they
probably will be madeo
I believe that we are agreed that a new kind of
deep sea vehicle can be bUilt which will extend the
range and the depth and the scientific flexibility.
The major question that we have not answered» and
which perhaps we can discuss this afternoon after we
discuss the military aspects" is the extent to which
the United states should become involved in a program
of this sort
0
Do they find profits that are rather
obvious justification for the expenditure of rather substantial amounts of funds which will be necessary?
With that I think we will c10se 9 and I believe we
are supposed to get started 9 according to the
at Ig450
program~
We are starting a little late, so can we make
it 2g00 o'clock?
All righto
(Thereupon 9 at
l2~25
adjourned for luncho)
2g00 o'clocko
o'clock y Po Me.\) the meeting was